Sunday, November 11, 2007

It should be made a simple tenet of Human rights that says that every human being should have the fundamental right to medical care regardless of his or her income.

When we tried in the afternoon of September 11 2001 to obtain some insulin from a pharmacy in Jersey City for two little old ladies who had just been evacuated from Battery Park, Manhattan that day and who had no clue where they were going to go next, we were told that they could not have any as they did not have their perscriptions filled at that Pharmacy and had no proof of insurance. THIS WAS ON THE AFTERNOON OF SEPTEMBER 11 ACROSS THE HUDSON FROM THE PLACE WHERE TWO OF THE TALLEST TOWERS HAD JUST COLLAPSED BEFORE THE EYES OF EVERYONE!

Pretty sick if you ask me!

My girlfriend was asked in 2002 at a Jersey City hospital at 11:30 pm, where I was submitted for emergency care after a car accident, how much my annual income was!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

I watched some news item the other day about a sherrif in Arizona (view the video link in the blog title) who like the law enforcers in some other places like Irving and Farmers Branch Texas and some folks in Oklahoma have decided to arrest all illegal immigrants, jail them, make them wear pink underwear and send them home.

In the context of my blog title this is ironic for a free people to take such negative action, one and secondly use Hitler type razzia's to achieve their objectives.

These folks have short memories, Arizona was one of the frontier states in the Wild West era. Texas was Mexican territory not so many decades ago. Both have a history of conquering and settling on new Land.

They were not the indiginous population of these territories, in fact the Mexicans were in Texas before the "Americans" and before them it was the Indians who roamed most of these territories freely.

So only a few decades ago all the grand parents or great grandparents of the people who are now trying to run immigrants from their towns, put them in jail and make them wear pink underwear, moved into a territory that was not theirs and settled there freely without any visa, work permit or whatever.

I am not suggesting that we go back to the rough and tough settler days but let us at least remember and recognize the fact that at one point in our history our families were all immigrants. We made the rules of settling where ever we wanted and never asked permission from the Indians or indiginous population if it was legal or convenient for them. In fact most of the time territory was obtained with bloodshed.

The majority of the current illigal immigrants are not violent, they come here in search of employment in order to provide for and feed their often extended families over here or at home, just like the early settlers risked life and limb to find a place where they could provde for their own.

One characteristic that most immigrants have in common is that they are poor and barely have a pot to piss in, even our great grandparents were that way.

Now would it not be logical that people whose forefathers endured the same hardship as these modern immigrants would emphatise with kindred spirits rather than ruthlessly try to run them out of town deploying NAZI tactics.

We should be helping them on the road to legalization. Instead we harrass them, request unreasonable amounts of money to get them legalized, remember they do not have a pot to piss in! with a complicated immigration process that sometimes can only be safely navigated by expert lawyers, more money that they do not have, and that can sometimes last months if not years to complete!

Mission impossible and Catch 22 at the same time!

I remember a long time ago in the 70's the Swiss attempted the same thing with cheap Italian labour and they failed. They failed because the cheap Italian labour was doing all the work that the elitist Swiss refused to do. It got to the point where critical infrastructure projects ground to a halt because there were no more Italians to keep them going.

They gave in and eased the regulations for Italian guest workers, and the threat that politicians perceived for the Swiss labour force never materialised.

One must not forget that politicians need a platform to give them a reason to be, even though the ordinary people often do not appear to find these things an issue, it is one for the politician as he/she needs it to have a platform to speak from, like the seperatists in Canada.Most ordinary citizens of Quebeck would laugh at you when Canadian seperatism came up, most were by-lingual, most wanted to keep the country together. A lot of Canadian Prime ministers were Quebeqois at the time.

But no the Canadian separtist movement was driven enthusiatically by the politcal elite in Quebec just so that they had a platform that could be carried by the media and keep them in the spotlight, even though the ordinary citizens could not care less.

Needless to say the issue died a natural death.

Given this perspective, I think the American people should stop being defensive about immigration, the country is founded by immigrants just like the ones that are now coming in, Times have changed and it is no longer about land but about jobs.

We need people that are willing to start at the bottom of the foodchain and slowly work their way up, just like our forefathers, without them there would be no one working the jobs that less and less Americans are willing to work and our infrastructure would go to hell.

We should make it easier and less costly for them to obtain the permissons they need to go about their business and become legal. Much of this will also take the criminal element out of the illegal immigrants work, get rid of the army of leeches of lawyers, who are earning a fortune ripping these poor folks off.

All these efforts to make the modern immigrants life a misery shows a lack of self confidence in those that pursue it. This is America of the free, the confident people who look to the future and should be willing to allow others to be able to look to the future in confidence and without fear.